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Vogue Business Talent Contest 2021 

By Vogue Business Team

The Vogue Business talent contest aims to amplify new voices in the world of fashion and beauty business journalism. We are looking for aspiring US-based writers of all ages who are curious and excited about the mechanics of the fashion and beauty industries. Whether it's a report on the tech innovations shaping the luxury industry, a deep dive into circular fashion solutions or unpacking a new consumer trend — Vogue Business wants to hear from you.

Deadline: 11:00:00am Eastern Time (ET) 8 December 2021

We strongly encourage participation from the following groups:

• Individuals from the BIPOC or Underrepresented communities
• Individuals from the LGBTQIA+ Community
• Individuals with seen or unseen disabilities or a long-term limiting illness
• Individuals who are parents or caregivers
• Individuals who are unemployed or underemployed
• Individuals who are from socially or economically disadvantaged backgrounds

The winner must be available to complete a one-month remote internship at Vogue Business before December 2022. Entrants should not have been published in a national US newspaper or magazine. Entries will be shortlisted by the Vogue Business team and the final selection will be carried out by editorial director Sarah Shannon and an external judging panel, including:

• Steven Kolb, CEO of CFDA
• Sandrine Charles, publicist
• Mara Hoffman, designer
• Sinéad Burke, academic, activist and consultant
• Sharon Chuter, founder Uoma Beauty/ @PullUpForChange
• Rob Smith, founder of The Phluid Project
• Tina Chen Craig, founder U Beauty
• LaQuan Smith, designer
• Yashica Olden, chief global diversity and inclusion officer, Condé Nast
• The winning article published on the Vogue Business site (edited and reworked in collaboration with editorial director Sarah Shannon)
• A four-week paid internship at Vogue Business , working remotely with the editorial team
• One year of mentorship from a member of the Vogue Business editorial team

Two runners-up will receive a year of mentorship from a member of the Vogue Busines s team.

How to enter

• Write one 800 - 1,000 word article which could be published on Vogue Business . The article can be about any topic, but it must be fashion/beauty business-related. As a guide, our site categories are companies, fashion, technology, retail, sustainability, beauty and data. It should be no more than 1,000 words, in English. Your work will be judged on originality, research, writing quality and style (not including spelling and grammar) and suitability and relevance to the Vogue Business audience.
• Write two story pitches for articles you would like to write for Vogue Business , no more than 100 words per pitch. The pitch should include the title, summary, why it’s relevant/important and who you would interview (be imaginative and think big, the ideas can be as ambitious as you like). You will be judged on the originality of the pitch and its suitability for the Vogue Business audience.
• Visit https://voguebusinesstalentcontest.awardsplatform.com and register to access the entry form and upload your article and pitches. 

Both entry components (article and pitches) must be uploaded to the application portal by 11:00am ET on 8 December 2021. Please do not include your name or any personal details within your article/pitches.

Full terms and conditions can be found here . 

Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at [email protected] .

By Madeleine Schulz

By José Criales-Unzueta

By Ezreen Benissan

By Maliha Shoaib

By Lauren Cunningham

Here's How to Enter The New York Public Library “Books For All” Writing Contest

By Teen Vogue

Have you ever wanted to be published in Teen Vogue? Well, now’s your chance!

We’re teaming up with The New York Public Library in honor of Books for All , their national initiative inviting communities across the country to stand against book banning and protect the freedom to read. The initiative includes a Teen Banned Books Club, with access to frequently banned titles for anyone in the U.S., as well as a National Teen Writing Contest for people aged 13-19 — with the grand prize-winning essay to be published here in Teen Vogue! Because of the vast increase in book bans and challenges throughout the US, the Library launched “Books For All,​​" in collaboration with the American Library Association and Unite Against Book Bans , to expand digital access to select titles and encourage members of the public, especially teens, to engage in the conversation around book bans and censorship. The campaign highlights the importance of reading and access to knowledge for all. It also underscores the vital role that public libraries play in our democracy.

“Teen Vogue is absolutely thrilled to work together with The New York Public Library on this contest in an era of increased book bans and attacks on education,” Versha Sharma, Editor-in-Chief of Teen Vogue, said. “Our mission at Teen Vogue is to educate, empower, and amplify the voices of the younger generation, a mission that feels more vital than ever. We encourage young people from all over the country to submit to this contest, something I definitely would have applied for as a teen myself! We are excited and honored to be partnering with an institution as essential as a public library, and are huge fans of NYPL’s efforts to make banned books available to read to students across the country.”

NYPL is the largest and most recognizable public library system in the country, with a wide array of services and offerings just for teens . Teen Vogue is renowned for combining youth-focused journalism with robust activism, including covering the Library’s annual Anti-Prom. NYPL provides teens with free spaces to create and explore who they are—including dedicated Teen Centers at select branches across the boroughs they serve, in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island. With their Teen Voices magazine , they also give teens a platform to share their unique perspectives with the world, which is why we’re teaming up. There is a significant amount of overlap in our teen audiences. We share a joint base of young people who are empathetic, engaged, and passionate about the issues confronting our country — which includes book bans.

“At a time of rising book bans and challenges, The New York Public Library is inviting teens from all over the country to make their voices heard in our teen writing contest celebrating the freedom to read,” NYPL President Anthony W. Marx said. “Thank you to Teen Vogue for helping amplify teen voices on this crucial issue, particularly since we know many of the bans and challenges are directly targeting books for young people. The freedom to read is essential to our democracy and a right we must never take for granted.”

Below, we’ve gathered everything you need to know about the contest and how you can get your very first Teen Vogue byline.

The writing contest will ask teens around the country: “Why is the freedom to read important to you?”

There will be a selection board of NYPL staff members and Teen Vogue editors.

The grand prize winner will receive a $500 cash prize, and 20 additional essays will receive a $250 prize. Winning submissions will be published in a special issue of NYPL’s Teen Voices magazine, and the grand prize winner will be published on teenvogue.com.

Contestants must be between the ages of 13–19.

December 29, 2023.

Contestants can submit entries online at nypl.org/writingcontest.

Let us slide into your DMs. Sign up for the Teen Vogue daily email .

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The New York Public Library Collaborates with Teen Vogue to Publish Winning Essay from the National Teen Writing Contest: Freedom to Read

Contest deadline extended to Friday, December 29

DECEMBER 20, 2023 — The New York Public Library and Teen Vogue announced today the grand prize winner of the Library’s National Teen Writing Contest: Freedom to Read will be published in Teen Vogue . The contest is part of the Library’s Books for All campaign, which launched during Banned Books Week in October and was created in response to the alarming rise in book bans and challenges around the country. The campaign is the largest and longest anti-censorship campaign in NYPL history. 

To support this exciting opportunity, the submission deadline for the writing contest has been extended to December 29. To enter, teens nationwide should submit an essay between 500 - 1500 words that answers the question: “Why is the freedom to read important to you?” Contestants must be between 13–19 and can submit entries online at nypl.org/booksforall . 

In addition to being published in Teen Vogue, the grand prize winner will receive $500. Twenty finalists will also receive a $250 prize. All winners will have their essays shared in a special issue of NYPL’s Teen Voices magazine. 

The writing contest, which is in partnership with 826 National, is part of the Library’s banned book initiative, which highlights the vital role public libraries play in our democracy. The campaign also features a new “Books for All: Teen Banned Book Club" that will run throughout the 2024 school year and provides unlimited nationwide access to select young adult titles that have been the subject of bans and/or challenges to anyone via the Library’s SimplyE app. The first book selected for the book club was Mark Oshiro’s “ Each of Us a Desert. ” The Library will announce the second book in the series next month. 

“At a time of rising book bans and challenges, The New York Public Library is inviting teens from all over the country to make their voices heard in our teen writing contest celebrating the freedom to read. Thank you to Teen Vogue for helping amplify teen voices on this crucial issue, particularly since we know many of the bans and challenges are directly targeting books for young people. The freedom to read is essential to our democracy, and a right we must never take for granted,” said NYPL President Anthony W. Marx.

“Teen Vogue is absolutely thrilled to work together with the New York Public Library on this contest in an era of increased book bans and attacks on education,” said Versha Sharma, Editor-in-Chief of Teen Vogue. “Our mission at Teen Vogue is to educate, empower, and amplify the voices of the younger generation, a mission that feels more vital than ever. We encourage young people from all over the country to submit to this contest, something I definitely would have applied for as a teen myself! We are excited and honored to be partnering with an institution as essential as a public library, and are huge fans of NYPL’s efforts to make banned books available to read to students across the country.”

About The New York Public Library

For over 125 years, The New York Public Library has been a free provider of education and information for the people of New York and beyond. With over 90 locations—including research and branch libraries—throughout the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island, the Library offers free materials, computer access, classes, exhibitions, programming and more to everyone from toddlers to scholars. To offer this wide array of free programming, The New York Public Library relies on both public and private funding. Learn more about how to support the Library at nypl.org/support. 

About Teen Vogue

Teen Vogue is the young person’s guide to conquering (and saving) the world. The brand aims to educate, enlighten and empower its audience to create a more inclusive environment (both on-and offline) by amplifying the voices of the unheard, telling stories that normally go untold, and providing resources for young people looking to make a tangible impact in their communities. Part of the Condé Nast portfolio, Teen Vogue covers the latest in celebrity news, politics, fashion, beauty, wellness, lifestyle, and entertainment.

Media Contacts

Media contact: Amy Geduldig, [email protected]

1951 Vogue Essay

Research by Steven L. Brawley

Vogue's 1951 “Prix de Paris” Competition

Self-portrait submitted by Jackie as part of her winning essay "People I Wish I had Known" (copyright Conde Nast Publications)

"A self portrait written from the author’s viewpoint is liable to be a little biased. Written from the viewpoint of others it would probably be so derogatory that I would not care to send it in. I have no idea how to go about describing myself but perhaps with much sifting of wheat from chaff I can produce something fairly accurate.

As to physical appearance, I am tall, 5’7”, with brown hair, a square face and eyes so unfortunately far apart that it takes three weeks to have a pair of glasses made with a bridge wide enough to fit over my nose. I do not have a sensational figure but can look slim if I pick the right clothes. I flatter myself on being able at times to walk out of the house looking like the poor man’s Paris copy, but often my mother will run up to inform me that my left stocking seam is crooked or the right-hand topcoat button about to fall off. This, I realize, is the Unforgiveable Sin.

I lived in New York City until I was thirteen and spent summers in the country. I hated dolls, loved horses and dogs and had skinned knees and braces on my teeth for what must have seemed an interminable length of time to my family.

I read a lot when I was little, much of which was too old for me. There were Chekov and Shaw in the room where I had to take naps and I never slept but sat on the window sill reading, then scrubbed the soles of my feet so the nurse would not see I had been out of bed. My heroes were Byron, Mowgli, Robin Hood, Little Lord Fauntleroy’s grandfather, and Scarlett O’Hara.

Growing up was not too painful a process. It happened gradually over the three years I spent at boarding school trying to imitate the girls who had callers every Saturday. I passed the finish line when I learned to smoke, in the balcony of the Normandie theatre in New York from a girl who pressed a Longfellow upon me then led me from the theatre when the usher told her that other people could not hear the film with so much coughing going on.

I spent two years at Vassar and still cannot quite decide whether I liked it or not. I wish I had worked harder and gone away less on weekends. Last winter I took my Junior Year in Paris and spent the vacations in Austria and Spain. I loved it more than any other year of my life. Being away from home gave me a chance to look at myself with a jaundiced eye. I learned not to be ashamed of a real hunger for knowledge, something I had always tried to hide, and I came home glad to start in here again but with a love for Europe that I am afraid will never leave me.

I suppose one should mention one’s hobbies in a profile. I really don’t have any that I work at constantly. I have studied art, here and in Paris, and I love to go to Art Exhibits and paint things that my mother doesn’t put in the closet until a month after I have given them to her at Christmas. I have written a children’s book for my younger brother and sister, as it amuses me to make up fairy tales and illustrate them. I love to ride and fox hunt. I will drop everything any time to read a book on ballet. This winter I am trying to catch up on things I should have learned before. I am taking typing and Interior Decorating outside of college and learning to play bridge and trying to cook things from recipes I found in France. I am afraid I will never be very successful over a hot stove.

One of my most annoying faults is getting very enthusiastic over something at the beginning and then tiring of it half way through. I am trying to counteract this by not getting too enthusiastic over too many things at once."

Notes:   In 1951 Miss Bouvier beat out more than twelve hundred of the college women in America to win Vogue's Prix de Paris competition, with her essay on "People I Wish I Had Known."  Carol Phillips, managing editor of Vogue said at the time: "Each paper is excellent – there is no exception. She is a writer… my only worry is that she might marry some day – and go off on one of those horses she speaks about ." 

Who did she say she would like to have known? In her essay, she listed playwright Oscar Wilde, poet Charles Baudelaire and ballet impresario Serge Diaghilev. Despite winning the competition, she ultimately declined the award and became the "inquiring camera girl" for the Washington-Times Herald.

Copyright Steven L. Brawley, 2002-2015. All Rights Reserved.

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int'l sijo competition

wisijo competition

2024 Essay Competition Rules and Information - CLOSED

Deadline: february 29, 2024 (11:59pm cdt), adult division (age 19-30 years).

Topic :" I'm Waiting for You " by Kim Bo-young

Prompts: Ursula K. Le Guin, probably the greatest woman Science Fiction writer of the 20 th  century, said many things about the nature of the genre. Consider two of these statements: First, she said that all SF, like fantasy, is metaphor. Secondly, she said that SF stories, while being speculative and extrapolative, needed to build on solid scientific principles. But she also pointed out that SF stories are permitted to contain a certain amount of what she termed inadequately-explained “PSG” (“pseudoscientific garbage”) as part of the genre backdrop as a kind of “given.” PSG would include such elements as faster-than-light travel and the transporter beam in Star Trek.   Kim Bo-young’s epistolary Science Fiction story, “I’m Waiting for You,” is a poignant human drama made all the more intense through its use of SF elements. What established PSG does it rely on as genre conventions and what solid scientific principle does it develop or extrapolate upon? How do those features in her story, combined with the emotional drama, make it all the more effective by the end? And—if all SF is metaphor—what is the underlying metaphor in “I’m Waiting for You”?

Senior division (grade 9th - 12th)

Topic : " I'm Waiting for You " by Kim Bo-young

Prompts: Kim Bo-young’s epistolary Science Fiction story, “I’m Waiting for You,” is a poignant human drama made all the more intense through its use of SF elements. Kim has been a screenwriter, a game developer, and a script advisor, most notably for the international hit, Snowpiercer.   The SF genre has a long literary lineage in the West while it is a relatively recent phenomenon in South Korea due to Korea’s modern political and economic history. And yet, given how rapidly Korea has developed, the SF genre (among others) has had explosive growth in the past two decades.   SF is a genre that very much builds upon itself, and you will have noticed that “I’m Waiting for You”—while it may not allude to many Western SF literary classics—clearly references Western SF films. Two of the more obvious influences are the recent The Martian and the classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Kim has said that her access to SF literature was limited in her youth because she grew up under the administrations of Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo- hwan, two military dictators, but even during those years many Western SF movies were popular in Korean theaters.)   What filmic influences do you see in Kim’s story, and how are those influences built upon or referenced to create the unique drama of “I’m Waiting for You”? (Pick only one or two films to reference in your analysis.)

Junior essay division (grade 8 and younger)

Folktales index

Korea has a rich tradition of storytelling, and its folktales reflect important aspects of its history and culture. Many of the old historical texts are full of local legends and myths. Folk tales can be entertaining and educational, but they can also strike a deep chord in our personal lives, and many Korean folktales demonstrate the universal tragedies and triumphs of daily life in the family.

Topics (choose one) : Each topic refers to the list of Korean folktales found on our 2024 folktales index page . Please make sure to select a folktale under the "2024 Essay Competition" list . When writing your essay, please be sure to include specific references to the tale you chose to write about.

• Write an interpretation of a folk tale of your choice. Why do you think it was created? Which character do you relate to best?
• If you could change one of these folk tales, what would you change and why?

Divisions : adult (age 19 - 30 years), senior (grade 9th - 12th), and junior (grade 8th and younger)

• Essays must not exceed 1,000 words in length.
• Junior division students should refer to our folktales index when choosing a folktale to write about and select one of the stories listed there. Please choose only one topic and folktale to write about.
• Entries must be submitted through our website .
• One entry per category per contestant is permitted. (Contestants are permitted one essay and one sijo entry.)
• Essay division age limits do not have a lower limit, but the sijo adult division is limited to age 19 and older. If a pre-college student would like to compete in the adult essay division and pre-college sijo division, s/he must create two separate application accounts.
• All entries must be written in English.
• Contestants' names cannot be written in their entries.
• We reserve the right to use all submitted pieces in future publications of the Sejong Cultural Society with no compensation to the authors.
• We reserve the right to not award any prizes.
• Winners are generally announced by early June . This estimate is subject to change depending on the number of total entries received; a more accurate estimate will be posted on our website soon after the competition deadline.
• Adult division: First ($1,000), Second ($750), Third ($500)
• Senior division: First ($500), Second ($400), Third ($300)
• Junior division: First ($300), Second ($200), Third ($100)
• Honorable mention (for all divisions listed above): Friends of Pacific Rim Awards ($50 each)
• Winners' works may be published in the Korea Times Chicago or the Korean Quarterly or Azalea : A Journal of Korean Literature and Culture, published by the Korea Institute at Harvard University.

© Copyright the Sejong Cultural Society . All rights reserved.

Essay  COMPETITION

2024 global essay prize, registrations are now open all essayists must register  here  before friday 31 may, 2024.

The John Locke Institute encourages young people to cultivate the characteristics that turn good students into great writers: independent thought, depth of knowledge, clear reasoning, critical analysis and persuasive style. Our Essay Competition invites students to explore a wide range of challenging and interesting questions beyond the confines of the school curriculum.

Entering an essay in our competition can build knowledge, and refine skills of argumentation. It also gives students the chance to have their work assessed by experts. All of our essay prizes are judged by a panel of senior academics drawn from leading universities including Oxford and Princeton, under the leadership of the Chairman of Examiners, former Cambridge philosopher, Dr Jamie Whyte.

The judges will choose their favourite essay from each of seven subject categories - Philosophy, Politics, Economics, History, Psychology, Theology and Law - and then select the winner of the Grand Prize for the best entry in any subject. There is also a separate prize awarded for the best essay in the junior category, for under 15s.

Q1. Do we have any good reasons to trust our moral intuition?

Q2. Do girls have a (moral) right to compete in sporting contests that exclude boys?

Q3. Should I be held responsible for what I believe?

Q1. Is there such a thing as too much democracy?

Q2. Is peace in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip possible?

Q3. When is compliance complicity?

Q1. What is the optimal global population?  

Q2. Accurate news reporting is a public good. Does it follow that news agencies should be funded from taxation?

Q3. Do successful business people benefit others when making their money, when spending it, both, or neither?

Q1. Why was sustained economic growth so rare before the later 18th century and why did this change?

Q2. Has music ever significantly changed the course of history?

Q3. Why do civilisations collapse? Is our civilisation in danger?

Q1. When, if ever, should a company be permitted to refuse to do business with a person because of that person’s public statements?

Q2. In the last five years British police have arrested several thousand people for things they posted on social media. Is the UK becoming a police state?

Q3. Your parents say that 11pm is your bedtime. But they don’t punish you if you don’t go to bed by 11pm. Is 11pm really your bedtime?

Q1. According to a study by researchers at four British universities, for each 15-point increase in IQ, the likelihood of getting married increases by around 35% for a man but decreases by around 58% for a woman. Why?

In the original version of this question we misstated a statistic. This was caused by reproducing an error that appeared in several media summaries of the study. We are grateful to one of our contestants, Xinyi Zhang, who helped us to see (with humility and courtesy) why we should take more care to check our sources. We corrected the text on 4 April. Happily, the correction does not in any way alter the thrust of the question.

Q2. There is an unprecedented epidemic of depression and anxiety among young people. Can we fix this? How?

Q3. What is the difference between a psychiatric illness and a character flaw?

Q1. “I am not religious, but I am spiritual.” What could the speaker mean by “spiritual”?

Q2. Is it reasonable to thank God for protection from some natural harm if He is responsible for causing the harm?

Q3. Does God reward those who believe in him? If so, why?

JUNIOR prize

Q1. Does winning a free and fair election automatically confer a mandate for governing?

Q2. Has the anti-racism movement reduced racism?

Q3. Is there life after death?

Q4. How did it happen that governments came to own and run most high schools, while leaving food production to private enterprise? 

Q5. When will advancing technology make most of us unemployable? What should we do about this?

Q6. Should we trust fourteen-year-olds to make decisions about their own bodies? 

ENTRY REQUIREMENTS & FURTHER DETAILS

Please read the following carefully.

Entry to the John Locke Institute Essay Competition 2024 is open to students from any country.

Registration  

Only candidates who registered before the registration deadline of Friday, 31 May 2024 may enter this year's competition. To register, click here .  

All entries must be submitted by 11.59 pm BST on  the submission deadline: Sunday, 30 June 2024 .  Candidates must be eighteen years old, or younger, on that date. (Candidates for the Junior Prize must be fourteen years old, or younger, on that date.)

Entry is free.

Each essay must address only one of the questions in your chosen subject category, and must not exceed 2000 words (not counting diagrams, tables of data, endnotes, bibliography or authorship declaration). 

The filename of your pdf must be in this format: FirstName-LastName-Category-QuestionNumber.pdf; so, for instance, Alexander Popham would submit his answer to question 2 in the Psychology category with the following file name:

Alexander-Popham-Psychology-2.pdf

Essays with filenames which are not in this format will be rejected.

The candidate's name should NOT appear within the document itself. 

Candidates should NOT add footnotes. They may, however, add endnotes and/or a Bibliography that is clearly titled as such.

Each candidate will be required to provide the email address of an academic referee who is familiar with the candidate's written academic work. This should be a school teacher, if possible, or another responsible adult who is not a relation of the candidate. The John Locke Institute will email referees to verify that the essays submitted are indeed the original work of the candidates.

Submissions may be made as soon as registration opens in April. We recommend that you submit your essay well in advance of th e deadline to avoid any last-minute complications.

Acceptance of your essay depends on your granting us permission to use your data for the purposes of receiving and processing your entry as well as communicating with you about the Awards Ceremony Dinner, the academic conference, and other events and programmes of the John Locke Institute and its associated entities.  

Late entries

If for any reason you miss the 30 June deadline you will have an opportunity to make a late entry, under two conditions:

a) A late entry fee of 20.00 USD must be paid by credit card within twenty-four hours of the original deadline; and

b) Your essay must be submitted  before 11.59 pm BST on Wednesday, 10 July 2024.

To pay for late entry, a registrant need only log into his or her account, select the relevant option and provide the requested payment information.

Our grading system is proprietary. Essayists may be asked to discuss their entry with a member of the John Locke Institute’s faculty. We use various means to identify plagiarism, contract cheating, the use of AI and other forms of fraud . Our determinations in all such matters are final.

Essays will be judged on knowledge and understanding of the relevant material, the competent use of evidence, quality of argumentation, originality, structure, writing style and persuasive force. The very best essays are likely to be those which would be capable of changing somebody's mind. Essays which ignore or fail to address the strongest objections and counter-arguments are unlikely to be successful .

Candidates are advised to answer the question as precisely and directly as possible.

The writers of the best essays will receive a commendation and be shortlisted for a prize. Writers of shortlisted essays will be notified by 11.59 pm BST on Wednesday, 31 July. They will also be invited to London for an invitation-only academic conference and awards dinner in September, where the prize-winners will be announced. Unlike the competition itself, the academic conference and awards dinner are not free. Please be aware that n obody is required to attend either the academic conference or the prize ceremony. You can win a prize without travelling to London.

All short-listed candidates, including prize-winners, will be able to download eCertificates that acknowledge their achievement. If you win First, Second or Third Prize, and you travel to London for the ceremony, you will receive a signed certificate. 

There is a prize for the best essay in each category. The prize for each winner of a subject category, and the winner of the Junior category, is a scholarship worth US$2000 towards the cost of attending any John Locke Institute programme, and the essays will be published on the Institute's website. Prize-giving ceremonies will take place in London, at which winners and runners-up will be able to meet some of the judges and other faculty members of the John Locke Institute. Family, friends, and teachers are also welcome.

The candidate who submits the best essay overall will be awarded an honorary John Locke Institute Junior Fellowship, which comes with a US$10,000 scholarship to attend one or more of our summer schools and/or visiting scholars programmes. 

The judges' decisions are final, and no correspondence will be entered into.

R egistration opens: 1 April, 2024.

Registration deadline: 31 May, 2024. (Registration is required by this date for subsequent submission.)

Submission deadline: 30 June, 2024.

Late entry deadline: 10 July, 2024. (Late entries are subject to a 20.00 USD charge, payable by 1 July.)

Notification of short-listed essayists: 31 July, 2024.

Academic conference: 20 - 22 September, 2024.

Awards dinner: 21 September, 2024.

Any queries regarding the essay competition should be sent to [email protected] . Please be aware that, due to the large volume of correspondence we receive, we cannot guarantee to answer every query. In particular, regrettably, we are unable to respond to questions whose answers can be found on our website.

If you would like to receive helpful tips  from our examiners about what makes for a winning essay or reminders of upcoming key dates for the 2024  essay competition, please provide your email here to be added to our contact list. .

Thanks for subscribing!

The John Locke Institute's Global Essay Prize is acknowledged as the world's most prestigious essay competition. 

We welcome tens of thousands of submissions from ambitious students in more than 150 countries, and our examiners - including distinguished philosophers, political scientists, economists, historians, psychologists, theologians, and legal scholars - read and carefully assess every entry. 

I encourage you to register for this competition, not only for the hope of winning a prize or commendation, and not only for the chance to join the very best contestants at our academic conference and gala ceremony in London, but equally for the opportunity to engage in the serious scholarly enterprise of researching, reflecting on, writing about, and editing an answer to one of the important and provocative questions in this year's Global Essay Prize. 

We believe that the skills you will acquire in the process will make you a better thinker and a more effective advocate for the ideas that matter most to you.

I hope to see you in September!

Best wishes,

Jamie Whyte, Ph.D. (C ANTAB ) 

Chairman of Examiners

Q. I missed the registration deadline. May I still register or submit an essay?

A. No. Only candidates who registered before 31 May will be able to submit an essay. 

Q. Are footnote s, endnotes, a bibliography or references counted towards the word limit?

A. No. Only the body of the essay is counted. 

Q. Are in-text citations counted towards the word limit? ​

A. If you are using an in-text based referencing format, such as APA, your in-text citations are included in the word limit.

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From The Archive: Joan Didion On Hollywood, Her Personal Style & The Central Park 5

By Georgina Howell

Joan Didion looks too insubstantial to be the author of Salvador or Miami ; the first a book about political repression and terror, the second about the violent domain where Cuban exiles continue to play out the revolutionary politics of Havana. Once, when she was young enough to be unguarded, she wrote, “I am so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does. That is one last thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.”

“Always in the sense that somebody else’s view of you is never quite your own view of you. That’s what I meant. I didn’t mean that you’d go in with a hostile intent. I find myself rather… um… I’ve found myself having to defend that statement ever since.”

The publication of a new book of essays by this American novelist, Sentimental Journeys , sent me back to her first collection, Slouching Towards Bethlehem . Published at the end of the 1960s, these pieces left a kind of tidemark in my mind of what journalism could be at its best. No one else wrote like that – sharply and in detail, like a woman, not like a dedicated feminist and not like an accommodating man, each object of her attention obliquely illustrating a point of larger note, and so evocatively of places that when I went to California I could see it no other way than 20 per cent Raymond Chandler, 80 per cent Joan Didion.

I was also interested because Joan Didion had won American Vogue ’s talent contest in 1956 and joined the magazine for $37.50 a week, the equivalent of £9 a week. I was earning in the British Vogue office in 1960, doing precisely the same things she had started by doing in New York – running errands, buying cups of coffee and turning out sentences of precisely 39 characters. Out of this background which I knew so well, where we were cautioned to wear hats and gloves on the streets and to ring our mothers regularly, she had emerged as the author of a suicidally depressing bestselling novel, Run River ; of Los Angeles Notebook , containing an unforgettable 1,000 words about the Santa Ana wind and its effect on the community when it blew for 14 days; and of the title piece of Slouching Towards Bethlehem , an account of what it was like to hang out in Haight Ashbury in 1967, with Janis Joplin singing in the Panhandle, liquid projections instead of TV and 14-year-olds on acid.

By Laura Jackson

By Alice Cary

By Tish Weinstock

When I met her 25 years on, in the sunny drawing room of the 10-room apartment on New York’s upper East Side, where she lives with her husband, the writer John Gregory Dunne, the first thing I still wanted to know was whether she had hung out in her usual short-sleeved beige shift and Louis-heeled pumps. Or in headband and flares?

She has a sweet, wintry face and a limp, brownish bob. She is bird-boned and round-shouldered and dresses in expensive, neutral silks. She hardly moves her lips when she speaks, but her voice comes as a surprise. It is deep, lazy and so muted that I have continual trouble recording it above the distant traffic noise.

“I went as myself,” she murmurs. “I thought it would be dishonest to go in as anything other than what I was. Some people were amused by this. Some were derisive.” She gives her dry, rattling laugh and the peak gauge level of my tape recorder gives a sudden jump.

Her Sacramento background was conservative, tending towards bourgeoise, her family’s ways “difficult, oblique, deliberately inarticulate”. She wanted to go to Stanford, a conservative, private university, but went instead to Berkeley, top of the state universities. “From Stanford,” says a friend, ‘Would she ever have written Slouching Towards Bethlehem ?”

“I remember when we were doing research for a movie once and we were on the road with some bands,” she says. “The producer made a joke about how I had gone through this entire tour wearing a Pucci dress. I had thought I looked fairly hip,” she adds, drily. “But apparently that hadn’t come across.”

I ask her how she arrived at the title of her new book, Sentimental Journeys , and she begins talking about Los Angeles, where the Didion-Dunnes, as they are invariably called, lived for 24 years.

“Los Angeles presents a real culture shock when you’ve never lived there. The first couple of years you feel this little shift in the way you think about things. The place doesn’t mean anything. Los Angeles strips away the possibility of sentiment. It’s flat. It absorbs all the light. It doesn’t give you a story. Then you start asking what it is to mean something. What does New York mean? Then you start telling yourself what New York means is a sentimental story.”

Even those who, like the Didion-Dunnes, read what they call the “freak death” pages of the press every day, were shocked by the New York “wilding” attack on the 29-year-old jogger that took place on 19 April 1989. In the title essay of her new collection, Joan Didion write briefly of what happened, but scrutinises in detail the stories that came out of the story when an unmarried white woman, an investment banker in the Manhattan offices of Salomon Brothers, was assaulted, raped and nearly killed by six black and Hispanic teenagers during her usual evening run through Central Park. When found, Joan Didion meticulously notes, the victim “had lost 75 per cent of her blood. Her skull had been crushed, her left eyeball pushed back through its socket, the characteristic surface wrinkles of her brain flattened.”

She fastidiously abstains from taking a moral view about this. Her habitual style when writing about torture and murder is so clinical that her critics accuse her, perhaps accurately, of a certain indifference to the suffering of others. The piece about the jogger, in fact, is not really about the attack at all. What interests her far more is the overlaying of the event by the preferred sentimental narratives of New York, and the way the story changed in its telling through the media.

It is the gap between reality and its interpretations that Didion has made her special realm ever since 1979 when she wrote: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live… we look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret… select.” She goes on, in Sentimental Journeys , to draw further inferences, writing about the fictions purveyed via a cooperative press in the course of a political campaign, focusing on a staged event and photo opportunity with Governor Dukakis – a “Tarmac arrival with ball tossing”.

“With the nonfiction I’ve been writing recently, I’ve been doing fewer scenes, and my view has become more political. Maybe it’s just that I’m getting older.”

What’s the difference?

“I’ve stopped thinking of things as personal.”

Some would doubt this, and would maintain that there is a political dimension to Joan Didion’s selling of herself as a writer. When it was published by Simon & Schuster in the United States, the book was called not Sentimental Journeys but After Henry , its title piece a tribute to her friend and early editor, Henry Robbins, who died in 1979 at the age of 51. After two increasingly problematic years with Simon & Schuster, Robbins had left the publishing house, while Joan Didion had remained. Her dedication is “to Henry Robbins and to Bret Easton Ellis, each of whom did time with its publisher”.

This slap on two cheeks, acknowledged by the president of Simon & Schuster’s Consumer Group, Jack Romanos, as “very clever”, includes her rancour on behalf of her daughter Quintana’s friend Bret Easton Ellis, whose controversial book about a misogynist serial killer, American Psycho , was rejected by the publisher.

“I thought that it was a wrong thing to have done,” says Joan Didion. “Sonny Mehta at Knopf picked the book up right away for Vintage paperbacks. I thought it was an ambitious, serious book that didn’t in any way deserve the things that were being said about it. And the reaction to that book really undid Bret – he was so far from having intended to shock. As far as my next book goes, I don’t know who’s going to publish it.”

A less charitable view suggests that the swipe at her publishers was not unconnected with Simon & Schuster’s decision to allow some of Didion’s books to go out of print. Bob Silvers, editor of The New York Review of Books , says, “There was a swirl of talk in literary circles about the dedication when the book came out.” This, in one critic’s view, added a few inches to review columns and an extra impetus to sales.

Her work for such publications as Esquire , The Saturday Evening Post and Life has documented random events as the milestones of a threatening era in the United States. As this has gathered momentum over the 25 years since the murders at Sharon Tate Polanski’s house, the ominous note of Didion’s writing has signalled the coming of some kind of climax, realised in the transferred rage of the period of the LA riots. At around the time of her second novel, Play It as It Lays (1970), she acquired, she said, “a sense of having run up against some grace meaninglessness.” This feeling pervades her four novels, all stories of disillusionment rendered in the numbed, deadpan style she has made her own.

We have moved, because of the drowned quality of her voice, from the professionally decorated drawing room with its marble mantel shelf of shells and glass, its real log fire and toile de Jouy, into the quieter back bedroom she has kept for her daughter. Quintana was adopted at birth and now, at 26, lives in Manhattan in an apartment of her own; she is a photographer and works for the New York office of the French news photo agency SIPA. Joan Didion sits on a pale sofa under the window; I sit on the patchwork quilt of Quintana’s single bed.

Her best pieces are often about subjects too unwieldy or bulky to attract a lesser writer, such as the brief essay on The California State Water Project she wrote in The White Album , which has a strange, poetic quality and remains an object lesson in gripping the reader’s imagination. A recent favourite of mine is her piece about Mac Griswold’s and Eleanor Weller’s book on great American gardens, “Proud Owners, Private Estates”, for The New York Times , a taut, craftsmanlike essay about the use of the garden in reinventing the personal history of the American rich, “all those Fords and Fricks and Sieberlings and Armours,” with their gourd walks and box mazes and hemlock circles and morning gardens.

Didion seems often in her life to be in the right place at the right time. Five or six years before the 1970s had even begun she had caught the mood in Haight Ashbury. “Suddenly, I had this sense that something else was going on, that the world had passed us by, and I wasn’t getting it. It was – get it or die! With Miami , it was a feeling I had that whatever was coming up along the Gulf was the future, but I couldn’t get a focus on it. We are all very familiar with it now, because of JFK, but I started getting interested at the time of the Garrison trials. Clay Shore and these weird people were floating around along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Miami. It was a really exciting and revelatory thing.”

Her chief reason for having left California is characteristically oblique. Her daughter was grown up and she wanted to travel more, to use New York as a point of departure. Then, early last year, John Gregory Dunne had open heart surgery, followed by blood poisoning, and took a year to recover.

“Here I was in New York and I hadn’t addressed where I was living. Times were getting very bad and New York was ahead of the rest of the country in quite dramatically plunging into depression. I thought I should come to terms with that. I meant to write a series of pieces, but by the time I’d finished the first piece, about the jogger, I thought I had caught up with all I needed to know.” She rattles off her laugh.

As her writing has become more analytical and her pieces longer, I find them harder to read, but her reasons for the changes tend to be pragmatic. “I had a terrible time with the jogger piece because I didn’t have a New York police pass and, without that, many days you couldn’t get into the courtroom. So it kind of drove me to do something else. And the whole process of my writing changed quite dramatically when I started using a laptop. I used to work on every sentence and get that down to something, then go onto the next sentence. With a computer you start with a block of stuff, then you shape it. I cried for two weeks at first because I couldn’t understand it, then suddenly I got the hang of it.”

The 28-year marriage of the unobtrusive Joan Didion and the boisterous John Gregory Dunne – like his brother, Dominick, one of the best American journalists – has been described by friends as “made in heaven”. They form a perfect symbiosis. Typically, he protects and promote her interests while she sits quietly, rarely attempting to restrain his occasional excesses. His outbursts frequently endear him to his friends, who have particularly enjoyed repeating to each other a letter he recently sent to the president of American Airlines, beginning, “Dear Sir,

Let me begin by explaining why I called one of your counter clerks a dumb f***.”

She is the one who does the books, adds up the figures, sorts out the certificates of deposit. She is, after all, the daughter of a real-estate broker and gambler and the sister of the chairman of CB Commercial, a woman whose characteristic family conversation runs to “C2 zoning and freeway access and sale-leasebacks”. I’m reminded of this when she describes their present apartment as “pre-War”, American property language for buildings whose ceilings are a little higher and walls a little thicker than is usual in Manhattan.

They work separately on their journalism and books, together on writing movies – their most lucrative enterprise – which include The Panic in Needle Park , A Star is Born and True Confessions , among others. They write the first script, or adjust the attempts of other writers; they are so good at this that one movie buff has described their work as “giving the script a rinse”. John Gregory Dunne joins us, and I ask about their recent wedding anniversary. Neither of them can remember what they did that evening. Joan Didion thinks she might still have had flu.

“In all the years we’ve been together, we’ve never given each other a birthday present, a Christmas present, an anniversary present,” he boasts. “We had a lot of people in for Boxing Day, though. Vanessa Redgrave and her two daughters and Vanessa’s son and various people who had come to America for the first Christmas after Tony Richardson died.”

Their wedding day, as he once vividly wrote, held only inauspicious omens.

“Did I ask her or she me? There are moments when we each blame the other… the day she bought her wedding dress… was the day John Kennedy’s motorcade drove into Dealey Plaza in Dallas, past the Texas School Book Depository. The dress had no back… A few years later, Roman Polanski spilled a decanter of red wine on it, at a party in Bel Air for Sharon Tate… My younger brother was my best man; he later committed suicide. My four-year-old niece was the flower girl; she was later murdered. As we walked down the aisle, we promised each other that we could get out of this next week and not wait till death us did part.

Together they form a single social creature, and the latter adjective, I’m told, is apt.

“In LA,” Joan Didion admits, “When we were invited to a party we always went, because we didn’t know anybody.” It wasn’t long before John Gregory Dunne was writing, “Why write for films? Because the money is good… and because the other night, after a screening, we went to a party with Mike Nichols and Candice Bergen and Warren Beatty and Barbra Streisand. I never did that at Time .”

“In LA they were competitively social,” says a film director who knew them then, before they moved to New York. “There seemed to be some need for social acceptance, a desire to be clubbable. They would go to parties, not drink, not eat, just work the room. And when John kissed a friend his eyes would flicker over the room and he’d whisper, ‘Who’s that?’”

In New York, they tell me, they are about to “hole up” in order to finish a movie script. This means going to few literary parties and only meeting friends for a quick dinner at Elio’s. “They used to eat at 10pm in LA,” says one friend. “Now it’s a middle-aged thing: home by 10:30.”

The existence of any kind of social life at all is predictably denied by both of them, each in their separate ways.

“I have practically none,” says Joan Didion. “I mean, compared to other people. Basically I work till 8pm or 9pm every night. But it’s hard to live in New York without seeing a certain number of people, often only in restaurants.”

“This’ll prove it,” says John Gregory Dunne, thrusting a fan of invitation cards under my nose. “Decline. Decline. Decline. OK?”

“Selective,” is how Bob Silver, editor of The New York Review of Books , describes their social priorities. He is a rather selectively social figure himself, king of a snobby, self-regarding New York literary circle which moves chiefly in its own orbit, as close-knit and mutually supportive as Bloomsbury. I had met him on the Thursday, when the Didion-Dunnes had taken me to Susan Sontag’s book launch at the New York Public Library. Here, in a room something like the entrance to the Paris Ritz, the glum-faced authoress shook her grey hair at me like a shaman and failed to smile when Joan Didion drew her attention to a review in the Los Angeles Times Magazine which described Sontag as “a former Valley girl”. We met Sontag’s son, the author David Rieff; the journalist Lesley Garris and her playwright husband, Arthur Kopit; Dr Steve Wasserman, the editor of Times Books; and Mac Griswold, co-author of the book on American gardens, to name but a few.

Manhattan literati having replaced movie stars, the Didion-Dunnes seem set to stay in New York. Highly strung but well grounded, and well off for many years now, Joan Didion characterically portrays herself in her writing as alienated, fragile and adrift. There is a sense, as one literary critic put it to me, that she is “ethereal, special, seemingly made of a different substance from the rest of us”. In a writer so far from sentiment, this can seem precious. From a mixed bag of her books:

“I am a 34-year-old woman with long straight hair and an old bikini bathing suit and bad nerves.”

“I took that bright pink boat to Pearl Harbor, but I still do not know what I went to find out… because there was a point at which I began to cry, and to notice no one else.”

“I still could not walk on upper Madison Avenue in the mornings and still could not talk to people and still cried in Chinese laundries.”

“I cut my finger opening him a beer and burst into tears.”

It seems that she is aware that readers can be irritated by all this dampness. “It was once suggested to me,” she writes in “On Self-Respect”, “That, as an antidote to crying, I put my head in a paper bag.” She did, of course, see the humour of the thing. She wrote: “It is difficult in the extreme to continue fancying oneself Cathy in Wuthering Heights with one’s head in a Food Fair bag.”

Yet when she writes about the time, many years ago, when a neurologist told her she had a condition called multiple sclerosis, but that the name meant nothing – she might or might not suffer symptoms of neural damage – she describes the effects the announcement had on her without a trace of self-pity. “I had a sharp apprehension of what it was like to open the door to the stranger and find that the stranger did indeed have the knife.” She might or might not feel the effects of the disease, or the knife. It is, she concludes, “another story without a narrative.”

When writing her essay on the jogger, a decade later, she did not tell us the idealised story the public wanted to hear. She did not tell us, like the cheap press, that the jogger wore “a light gold chain around her slender neck” or “a thing sheen” of lipstick or would not “even dignify her alleged attackers with a glance”, or that in the witness stand she has taught the city a lesson “about courage and class”. She told us that a parallel and opposite storyline was distorting what had happened among the black community, and she told us that the gap between the favoured narratives of New York’s haves and have-nots was widening.

Read more: 9 Gripping Novels & Memoirs To Curl Up With This Spring

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Salma Hayek Joins Madonna for ‘Vogue’ in Mexico City

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Madonna performed her penultimate concert on her massive Celebration Tour in Mexico City on Friday night, and to mark the occasion she invited surprise guest Salma Hayek . The actress served as a judge during the “Vogue” ballroom competition at Madonna’s concert at the Palacio de Los Deportes.

Hayek shared videos and photos from the moment via Instagram on Saturday. Channeling Frida Kahlo — the legendary painter whom the actress portrayed in the 2002 film — with her vibrant ensemble, she is seen in a Vogue pose and on stage beside Madonna ready to share score cards as a ballroom judge of the dancers’ performances during “Vogue.”

“Thank you so much @madonna for letting me be a part of your iconic celebration tour,” Hayek captioned the post. “This unforgettable night goes in my bag of precious treasures. #VIVAMEXICO #VIVAMADONNA .”

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Salma Hayek Pinault (@salmahayek)

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Madonna’s final tour stop is a big one, in fact it’s slated to draw her biggest crowd yet. On May 4, she concludes the tour with a free show at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro,  Brazil .

The performance marks the star’s first time performing in Brazil since 2012 (during her MDNA run), and is billed to be “a thank you to her fans for celebrating more than four decades of her music over the course of the epic global run of the tour.”

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The 2024 Harper's Bazaar Short Story Competition is now open for entries

Here’s how to apply

Harper’s Bazaar has a long history of publishing original fiction, by writers from Henry James and Virginia Woolf to Ali Smith and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. In keeping with this legacy, we are pleased to announce the launch of our annual short-story competition in association with Montblanc, previous winners of which have included Kaliane Bradley, Daisy Johnson and Fatima Bhutto.

We invite published and non-published authors to submit an original story of up to 2,000 words on the theme of ‘The experiment’ to [email protected] by midnight on 25 February 2024.

Terms and conditions: The competition is open to UK residents only, aged 18 and over, published or unpublished . To enter, send an original, unpublished short story, written in English on the subject of ‘The experiment’ and of up to 2,000 words, to [email protected].

The competition closes at midnight on 25 February 2024. Stories received after the closing date will not be considered. The winner will be selected by a panel of judges and will be based on literary merit, originality and readability. Entrants will be deemed to have accepted these terms and to have agreed to be bound by them. The winner will receive a two-night mid-week stay at Chewton Glen in Hampshire , including daily breakfast and dinner, and use of the spa. The prize is subject to the hotel’s terms and availability. It does not include travel to and from the hotel. This competition is not open to any employees of Hearst, the promoter or their immediate families, the promoter’s advertising agency and sales-promotion consultancy, or anyone else connected with the creation and administration of the competition. Only one competition entry, fulfilling the eligibility requirements above, will be accepted per person. Once selected, only the winner(s) will be contacted personally by email, using the contact details provided upon entry. Entry to the competition and acceptance of the prize constitutes permission to use any entrant's name, image and any competition-entry photograph, for promotional and/or editorial purposes in any format in print and non-print media without additional consultation. It is assumed that you have the permission of your employer for any time off work that is required to claim the prize. Hearst or the third party are not liable in any way to any winner who cannot attend. Winners will be notified by June 2024. By entering the competition and in consideration for Hearst publishing your entry, you assign to Hearst the entire worldwide copyright in your entry for all uses in all print and non-print media and formats, including but not limited to all rights to use your entry in any and all electronic and digital formats, and in any future medium hereafter developed for the full period of copyright therein, and all renewals and extensions thereof, any rental and lending rights and retransmission rights and all rights of a like nature wherever subsisting. Hearst’s decision is final in every situation, including any not covered above, and no correspondence will be entered into in respect of the validity of any such decision. Hearst shall be permitted to exclude or disqualify any entrant at any time at its sole discretion. Hearst reserves the right to exclude late, incomplete or multiple registrations, or registrations made by third parties or agents. Hearst Magazines does not accept any responsibility for late or lost entries. Proof of sending is not proof of receipt. The name of the winner(s) will be announced in Harper’s Bazaar (print magazine or online) in August 2024. No purchase is necessary. Once entered, entries cannot be returned or withdrawn. Spammers will be disqualified. Prizes must be taken as stated, although Hearst reserves the right to change the prize in the event of unforeseen circumstances. By entering the competition, you agree to the terms of the Privacy Policy. In addition, Hearst may pass your personal information to the promoters of the competition (where it is not Hearst) and their data processors. However, we always demand that any such parties adhere to the same security procedures that we follow ourselves. Hearst reserves the right to (i) cancel and/or withdraw this competition and/or (ii) amend these terms, at any time without notice. Where Hearst runs a competition with a promoter such that the promoter is responsible for the selection and/or the provision of prizes, then Hearst shall not be responsible for or have any liability for the provision of such prizes. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, in no event will Hearst be liable, whether in contract, tort (including negligence), breach of statutory duty, or otherwise, for any loss, damage or injury arising under or in connection with this competition. These terms are governed by English law, and entrants agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts in relation to all matters arising under or in connection with these terms.

READ THE 2022 WINNING ENTRY BY KALIANE BRADLEY

READ THE 2021 WINNING ENTRY BY JENNIFER KERSLAKE

READ THE 2020 WINNING ENTRY BY HUMA QURESHI

READ THE 2019 WINNING ENTRY BY AINGEALA FLANNERY

READ THE 2016 WINNING ENTRIES BY DAISY JOHNSON AND JAN CARSON

READ THE 2015 WINNING ENTRY BY KIRSTIN ZHANG

READ THE 2014 WINNING ENTRY BY JILL DAWSON

READ THE 2014 WINNING ENTRY BY FATIMA BHUTTO

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THE QUEEN'S COMMONWEALTH ESSAY COMPETITION

Since 1883, we have delivered The Queen's Commonwealth Essay Competition, the world's oldest international schools' writing competition. Today, we work to expand its reach, providing life-changing opportunities for young people around the world.

ENTER THE QCEC 2024

The Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition 2024 is now live!

Find out more about this year’s theme

'Our Common Wealth' and make sure to enter by 15 May 2024!

140 years of The Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition

The Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition (QCEC) is the world’s oldest international writing competition for schools and has been proudly delivered by the Royal Commonwealth Society since 1883. 

ABOUT THE COMPETITION 

An opportunity for young Commonwealth citizens to share their thoughts, ideas and experiences on key global issues and have their hard work and achievement celebrated internationally.

Frequently Asked Questions for the Competition. Before contacting us please read these.

MEET THE WINNERS 

In 2023 we were delighted to receive a record-breaking 34,924 entries, with winners from India and Malaysia. Read their winning pieces as well as those from previous years.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Terms and Conditions for entrants to The Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition. Please ensure you have thoroughly read them before submitting your entry.

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WIPO National IP Essay Competition 2024

April 26, 2024

Every year on April 26, we celebrate the World Intellectual Property (IP) Day to learn more about the role that IP rights play in encouraging innovation and creativity, and ultimately in shaping our world. This year’s celebration is themed “IP and SDGs: Building Our Common Future with Innovation and Creativity”, highlighting the role that IP plays in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.

To build our common future and achieve the SDGs, we need to re-think how we live, work and play. This year’s campaign is an opportunity to explore how IP encourages and can amplify the innovative and creative solutions that are so crucial to building our common future. The SDGs are an interdependent blueprint for people, peace, prosperity, and our planet. The challenges we face are deep-seated and complex. Therefore, development efforts must balance social, economic, and environmental sustainability. We need to use our ingenuity and intellectual property to achieve a sustainable future for everyone, everywhere.

In line with Nigeria’s focus on achieving zero hunger, this year’s theme provides an opportunity to explore the various ways in which IP can support long term food security in Nigeria, one of which is sustainable agriculture. Sustainable agriculture encourages farming methods and systems that meet society’s needs without negative effects on the environment or the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

As a part of efforts to commemorate this year’s World IP Day, the WIPO Nigeria Office welcomes participation of all students of tertiary institutions across Nigeria in the 2024 National IP Essay Competition. The essay competition topic “IP and Sustainable Agriculture: Combating Food Insecurity in Nigeria” is an opportunity for students to reflect on the role(s) IP can play to achieve SDG 2 in Nigeria.

Essay entries will be assessed for factual accuracy, imagination, originality, creative and innovative thought, by an independent expert Panel of Judges drawn from leading IP practitioners and entrepreneurs, academics, policy experts, scholars, and regulators across the country. Participation in this competition will provide students with an excellent opportunity to research and learn more about the field of intellectual property and its interaction with SDGs, as they explore policy ideas along the lines of this year’s essay topic.

Who can participate:

The national competition is open to all registered students (undergraduate and postgraduate) of recognized tertiary institutions in Nigeria; Universities, Colleges of Education, Polytechnics, as well as professional or vocational institutions.

Entry requirements:

• The essay shall be written in English in not less than 500 but not more than 1,500 words (500min- 1500 max), bibliography and references excluded;
• Double-line spacing and page numbered;
• Submissions must be made in word and pdf format;
• Do not include any pictures or other graphical illustrations;
• Entries must not contain any indication as to the names, school, number, email address or other means of identification or affiliation of its author and/or any other person;
• Plagiarism of any sort will result in disqualification;
• Submissions received after the announced deadline will not be considered.

Submissions will begin on May 6 2024 and close on May 31 2024 . Winners of the competition will be announced in June 2024.

Prizes to be won

• Three (3) scholarship spots to attend the WIPO Summer Schools.
• Scholarship spots on the WIPO Summer School in Nigeria.
• Scholarship spots on the Young Innovation Leaders Fellowship Awards to the West African Young Innovation Leaders Fellowship.
• Authors of the top 15 essays will receive special WIPO Packages and Certificates of Achievement.
• The top three essays will be submitted to WIPO for possible publication in the WIPO Magazine, subject to WIPO publication schedule and review.
• All authors of winning essays will receive scholarships to undertake any of the WIPO Distance Learning (DL) courses.
• Several other exciting IP learning and professional capacity building prizes will be won!

What our judges will look out for:

• Originality;
• Structural flow, clarity of thought and expression, grammatical accuracy and coherence;
• Relevance to the field of intellectual property (IP);
• Relevance to national, regional and/or international context;
• Policy suggestion, proposals and/or pathways.